Next door to his sleek dessert bar P*ONG, pastry chef Pichet Ong has opened a small, sunlit bakery called Batch. The treats here  little cupcakes, chewy cookies, and cupped puddings  are far more familiar. But the tastes may not be.

Well. Looks like the gals and gays from Blueprint are going to have a lot more time to make their own wrapping paper this holiday season. WWD reported that Martha Stewart Omnimedia had laid off a dozen people on Friday, and now Mediabistro is reporting that it was because they are shutting down the young lifestyle-y magazine. This saddens us, not just because we empathize with the staffers now facing a Christmas more anxiety-ridden than usual, but because we were kind of fond of Blueprint. Of all the recent nest-y publications, it was the quirkiest: a magazine for smart girls in grandma glasses who liked to knit, cooler than Rachael Ray but nerdier than Domino. Even when it totally veered from its mission and ran weird Highlights-era blurbicles like "What Your Doodle Means" or suggested an iPod playlist for you apropos of nothing, well, that was just part of its dorky charm. But we guess Martha didn't feel quite the same way.
Martha Stewart Axes Blueprint [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
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Maury Rubin has more on his mind than pretzel croissants. The chef-owner of bi-coastal branches of the City Bakery has become consumed of late with food miles, volatile organic compounds, and wax-lined coffee cups, those pernicious symbols of our disposable (but non-biodegradable) society. He has just opened the second outpost of Birdbath (code name: Sparrow), his pastry-shop side project that originated as a way to generate cash flow out of the front of his East Village commercial kitchen and has become, according to Rubin, “the greenest food business in the country.”
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